The electorate in South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary, where Donald Trump and Nikki Haley are currently vying for support, demonstrates striking similarities to the electorate in Iowa’s caucuses based on the initial findings from exit polls conducted by Edison Research for CNN.
More than 4 in 10 voters in South Carolina, like those in Iowa earlier this year, identify themselves as affiliates of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. Furthermore, approximately 80% of them confess to being conservatives, with over 40% identifying as very conservative.
Another significant finding from the exit poll is that just around one-third of voters acknowledge Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election. This figure is lower compared to New Hampshire, where nearly half of Republican primary voters admitted Biden’s victory.
In the January Iowa caucuses, Trump clinched a decisive victory with 51% of the votes, while Haley finished in third place behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The race was much closer in New Hampshire but Trump still emerged victorious with 54% of the votes against Haley’s 43%.
Exit polls serve as essential resources to understand primary voters’ demographic makeup and political inclinations. However, it is crucial to remember that they offer estimations and not exact measurements of the electorate. The initial set of exit poll results, which haven’t yet been weighted to correspond with the final primary outcomes, should be considered a preliminary glimpse into the electorate. The full sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.0 percentage points, with larger margins for subgroups.
The Republican presidential primary exit poll in South Carolina involved interviews with 1,508 GOP voters at 38 different polling locations on Election Day.
